Christmas service draws a shrinking congregation

Members of the Swedish Women's Chorus and the Svea Male Chorus sing during the Christmas Day service.

Members of the Swedish Women's Chorus and the Svea Male Chorus sing during the Christmas Day service.

Photo: Phil H. Webber/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Photo: Phil H. Webber/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Members of the Swedish Women's Chorus and the Svea Male Chorus sing during the Christmas Day service.

Members of the Swedish Women's Chorus and the Svea Male Chorus sing during the Christmas Day service.

Photo: Phil H. Webber/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Christmas service draws a shrinking congregation

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In most ways, the Christmas service at Gethsemane Lutheran Church yesterday resembled the Yuletide customs of churches throughout the city.

Hymns were sung, and the pastor read a sermon on the necessity of stillness before God. Tall candles, with white bows tied beneath, lined the aisles.

The 7 a.m. service in downtown Seattle stood out for one reason: It was conducted entirely in Swedish. It was attended by about 150 mostly older worshippers, some dressed in traditional Swedish garb, eager to immerse themselves in the culture and language of their forebears. Both the music and Swedish lyrics came naturally to most.

The Julotta service -- held at Gethsemane for 117 years -- has ancient origins. Conducted with a pipe organ, a string quartet and two choral groups, the music is related to Gregorian chants and stems from the 12th-century Orbis Factor Mass, used by the Church of Sweden since the Protestant Reformation four centuries later.

The Rev. Leslie Larson has conducted the service since 1965. "For many years, they used to pack the church," he said. "But many people have been dying off."

Attendance has dropped off in recent years, a reflection of changing demographics. As its members grow older, Seattle's Swedish community, part of the city's Nordic population, has been declining.

About 17 percent fewer Seattleites claimed Nordic heritage -- Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish or Danish ancestry -- on the 2000 Census compared with the 1990 figures, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In Ballard, historically the cultural center of the Scandinavian community, the Nordic population thinned in that period from roughly 10,400 to 8,000 -- a drop from 27 percent of the neighborhood to 20 percent.

The Swedish Cultural Center, until recently known as the Swedish Club, has seen an even more precipitous decline. In 1985, the club boasted 7,600 members, by far the largest such club in the country. Five years ago, the number had shrunk to 1,500.

Now, according to Forssblad, membership has declined to fewer than 900 -- and members' average age is about 70, she said.

Swedes have been in Seattle from close to the beginning of the city's history.

Waves of Swedish immigrants began pouring into the Puget Sound area in the late 1800s. They fished and worked in logging camps on the Eastside, attracted by the similarity of the terrain to that of their home country. Some came directly from Sweden; others arrived after stopping over in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

By 1910, about one-third of all immigrants in Seattle were Scandinavian.

But the vast majority of Swedes who settled here have not become household names.

Charles Wassberg, a retired music teacher, has been the organist at the Gethsemane Christmas service for more than 25 years.

His grandparents emigrated from Sweden in the early 1900s -- in his paternal grandfather's case, because he was a draft-dodger. Wassberg, who grew up in the University District and now lives in Wallingford, spoke both English and Swedish as a child.

The Christmas service, he says, is "nostalgic and very familiar to me."

Martin Larsson came to America in 1957 when he was 30 years old. "I was young and out for adventure," he said. "Instead, I found work," first as a crab fisherman in the Bering Sea and then in building construction.

Larsson, who lives in Queen Anne, returns to the service year after year and brings his family. It's "pretty much like the services back home," he said. "The liturgy is the same."

While the Swedish flavor near the core of Seattle's historical identity has faded, residents are fighting to stem the tide, and there are clear signs of life in the community, Forssblad and others say.

The cultural center hosts language classes, lecture series, films and the women's and men's choruses -- the 52-year-old Swedish Women's Chorus and 97-year-old Svea Male Chorus -- which sing the pleasant, complex Swedish harmonies at the Christmas service each year.

And there is Christmas morning at Gethsemane. The Rev. Larson, 86, said the service is an annual highlight for many in this region's Swedish community. People come from as far away as Vancouver, B.C., he said.

"For some of the people who come, it's the one time of the year to see old friends," said Larson. "It is a highlight, yes indeed. People look forward to it."